Dear Member
 
We are delighted to be able to inform you that agreement has finally been reached between the National Joint Council for local government services and the employers on the pay award effective 1 April 2023. Employers are being encouraged to implement the award as swiftly as possible.
 

You should now be in receipt of a confirming email which will have a copy of the agreement attached for your information.

 
Kind regards
UNISON Worcestershire Branch

SENT ON BEHALF OF CLAIRE CAMPBELL, REGIONAL MANAGER

Dear all

As Branches know, following consideration of the NJC industrial action ballot results, the NJC Committee decided not to pursue industrial action. On 15 August, UNISON’s NJC Exec representatives met with the other unions to discuss our respective positions. No agreement could be reached on a way forward, with Unite indicating they will be taking strike action in a few areas and GMB having not even started their ballot yet. Your Exec members proposed a meeting of the full NJC Trade Union Side and this was agreed.

A meeting of the full TU Side is quite unusual. To be clear, UNISON has an overall majority on that body, which means we are able to vote our position through at any meeting where we have our seats filled. The intention is that we will use this meeting to push through implementation of the pay offer. This is not a position that we happily find ourselves in, and we have done all we can to avoid this situation, including seeking to get a ballot timetable co-ordinated with the other unions. This was not possible, and it is clear that members are faced with too long a delay in getting the situation resolved. Calling a full TU Side meeting is a last resort and not one that is taken lightly.

The meeting has been set for 19 September, and we will keep Branches fully informed.

In the meantime, branches will of course want to update members. An all-member email went out earlier this week, explaining the NJC Committee’s decision on industrial action and making clear that we are trying to move the situation along. Branches are asked to continue to emphasise this, and it is fine to tell them that we hope that the full TU Side meeting, called for 19 September, will help resolve pay for 2023.

Our message is very much that we want to turn our attention to 2024 pay – getting a strong pay claim agreed and submitted as soon as possible, and launching a wide-ranging and ambitious campaign to support it.

Thanks, very best wishes.

Claire

Claire Campbell

Regional Manager

Madeleine Price

Pronouns: She/Her

Team Administrator - Fawcett Team, Regional Black Members SOG, Regional Welfare Committee, Energy & WET Committees

UNISON West Midlands

Regional Office, 24 Livery Street, Birmingham, B3 2PA

Dear Colleague,
 
From 23 May to 4 July UNISON held an industrial action ballot for council and school workers in England and Wales over pay. The results were sent out to regions and branches who have worked hard to share the ballot results with members. As this was a ballot of 345,000 members in more than 4,300 employers, the process of getting results out has been a complicated one, and we want to thank you for your patience throughout.
 
The support during the ballot and pay campaign from UNISON members across England and Wales has been incredible; the turnout was a huge improvement on the 2021/22 industrial action ballot and that groundswell of feeling will only build as we continue to campaign on pay. Due to the Tory anti-trade union laws, we can only take industrial action in employers where we achieved a turnout of 50% or more (with a majority voting for action) and unfortunately while we passed this turnout threshold in a number of employers, most of these were smaller employers. Given the legal restrictions that are in place from the Government, we have decided that it would not be effective to ask our members to take industrial action at this time.
 
We are currently in the process of talking to the other local government unions, GMB and Unite, so that we can now resolve this year’s pay dispute and get that pay increase in your pockets as soon as possible.
 
While the decision not to take industrial action may be disappointing to you, we are determined to continue our campaign to improve your pay – we want to get on with the 2024 campaign and build from here to the point where we can get the turnouts we need for strike action. We have come a long way and we would like to thank members, branches and regions for all of your hard work and determination in getting the vote out.
 
The fight continues and we will keep demanding fair pay for the vital work that you do.
 
Thank you,
 
Mike Short
Head of local government

To stewards and branch staff

Please see below the latest update re NJC ballot. Very frustrating for our members to see continuing delay, but good to see the UNISON position that:

UNISON’s exec reported our committee’s clear position that it did not feel we had a mandate to take effective national action that could improve the pay offer, and that it didn’t want to take small, isolated groups of members out on strike on behalf of large groups of members that didn’t meet the threshold. Our position was therefore that members wanted and needed the money in their pockets as soon as possible, and that we wanted to move forward to submitting a claim for 2024 and building on the improved participation this year in an even stronger 2024 pay campaign.

This is being worked on with the intention to minimise further delays and HQ will be sending a bulk email next week to all members on NJC pay to update them with the position.

Please share this information urgently with colleagues on NJC T&Cs. The national email system is still down so we are unable to do bulk emails from branch.

Kind Regards

Jane

Jane Evans (she/her)

Branch Secretary 

UNISON Worcestershire Branch 

30 Love's Grove, Worcester WR1 3BU 

01905 26186 

jevans@unisonworcestershire.co.uk 

Enquiries@unisonworcestershire.co.uk 

Website www.unisonworcestershire.co.uk/graph

Following on from our discussion re comms, we've just received the following message from Region:

"We  (Region) are in the process of emailing all members who are affected by the outcome of the 2023 LG NJC Ballot to inform them of the decision taken by the NJC Committee to wait for Unite’s ballot results before confirming our next steps. We will also inform them of the issues with general email communications."

From Branch

Dear Stewards and H&S reps

Please see comms below re the NJC ballot - the main outcome perhaps, 'the NJC Committee agreed to await the ballot results from our sister union Unite, whose ballot closes at the end of July, before confirming publicly our agreed next steps.'

The warms email system is still down (2 weeks now) so we cannot send out bulk communications. To you all,

"we’re aware that there have been some IT problems which are making it difficult to get results out to members. As a result, branches may wish instead to suggest that any interested members contact the branch to ask for the ballot result for their employer’s result."

We can still communicate with our stewards! Please contact us for your employer's results. 

Pre Closing Ballot Date News Below

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